Some thoughts from me about gaming.

*From my reply to a thread on a blog (hence some non sequiturity). Posted without context because it summarizes some things about my gaming desires/ideals, as well as my desires/ideals about talking about gaming.*

I like hanging out.I like gaming.I like *some* overlap between the two, but mostly when I am gaming I want to be primarily gaming (meaning the social interaction is mostly *through* the medium of the game, and less *around* the game. It’s a ratio, not an absolute).I prefer gaming with people I like to hang out with, but my schedule means that is not always possible. My schedule also means that I don’t have time for 20 minutes of game-specific-fun packed into 2 hours of game. When I was younger and had more time it was totally cool to blow a day dicking around playing D&D or whatever, and I had lots of fun socializing *around* D&D. Nowadays I want to pack as much game-specific-fun into as short a time as possible. Therefore I prefer games with a more reliable and consistent output of (whatever type of fun we’re trying to have that night). But I recognize that that’s me. You guys (for any value of “you guys”) have your thing that works for you (assuming it does- if it doesn’t, that’s a different matter, and it’s up to you to seek out something that does work, not up to me to tell you to do so).

“Forgey” games, incidentally, aren’t about whether there are more rules or less rules or even what whatever rules there are are about- the point is that whatever rules there are actually do what you want them to do. Seems like people lose track of that a lot of the time when discussing the ideas that came out of the Forge (including and especially a lot of self-identified-“Forgey” people themselves, who should know better).

The beauty of gaming is that there are games for every taste. People need to stop judging other people’s fun. If I’m not enjoying my gaming, I’ll find another game/group/situation. You don’t have to point out to me why my gaming isn’t your kind of fun, and vice versa. I don’t believe any of the folks who started the Forge ever wanted anybody to do that.